Potty Training Chickens

Q: Does anyone know how to potty train a chicken? I might have to take in a chicken. I would keep her indoors, the problem is that I have 2 cats and a dog. I am worried about sanitation. Is there a way I can train the chicken to poop in one area? -A REAL question posted on VegSource.com

A:No, there is no way. You just have to put a diaper on them. I have 2 chickens and they are in their pants most of the day. When I am home they have their diapers on. When I leave they go in the cage. -A REAL answer to that question posted at VegSource.com

SERIOUSLY! And the best part: when the poster asked where to find chicken diapers, someone else answered that the company that makes them named them "Flight Suits"! Hee hee... 

While you try to wrap your brain around chickens in their flight suits....

Like most skills in life, using the toilet, instead of the convenience of a diaper...or floor...is a learned activity. We had a fairly easy experience with Aidan (after that first rocky day or two when we highly considered just leaving him in diapers until puberty) and he was using the toilet like a pro a month before his 3rd birthday. Then came Madeline who, upon our arrival to CA decided she would teach herself. She was a master "pottier" at two and a half, by no effort on our part outside a little chocolate encouragement here and there. 

Then comes Lily. Lily went from thrilled at the prospects of getting an M&M every time she used the toilet to "Yay! Aidan and Mai Jane get M&Ms" but not wanting one herself to not really caring at all about the potty. But because "house training" isn't approved by the AAP (nor is the use of a litter box) we plow forward. 

So yesterday we were waiting for Madeline to finish up dance class when my nose noticed Liam was in need of a new diaper. Having used the last of the wipes without replacing them, I wheeled him and Lily into the restroom to wet some paper towels. Lily, recognizing the great opportunity in front of her (empty restroom, occupied mom, yippee!), jumped out of the stroller and headed into the biggest stall.  I finished changing Liam and took him over to the stall where I found Lily completely nude, clothes scattered on the floor, shoes in the corner and a very dry pull-up right in the middle of it all. She was trying to get up onto the toilet. 

"Do you need to go potty?" I asked, both eyebrows raised.

"Yeah!" she said, bubbling over with enthusiasm. I helped her up and sure enough, after a very short moment she started peeing. 

"Yay!" I cheered. "You did it!" 

Her eyes widened as big as her excited smile and she leaned backward to show me she was still going....and the stream flowed right out, onto the dry diaper, onto her clothes and all over me. Note to self: Please withhold applause until the Flight Suit is back on the chicken!

The Sky is Falling....oh wait, no, it isn't

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" -Chicken Little (or Henny Penny)

The chicks and I left the park earlier today because we heard the roar of thunder...they had spent the previous hour picking up rollie pollies and various grasses and plants to add to the bucket that contained their baby pet snail ("Snaily Nail" as they so lovingly refered to him).

And since we were meeting up with friends at Sugar Pies Bakery and Coffee House, Snaily Nail tagged along. Madeline insisted we take him and his dozen pill-bug friends inside so they wouldn't die in the car. (I think the car would probably be safer than the hands of a child but who can deny the possibility of death in a hot car in CA, especially when your life depends on moisture...) As we were sitting there, munching on baked goodies and feeding Liam bites of croissant (part of the reason he has gained 11 ounces these last two weeks! YAY!), another mom and her 1 year old daughter approached us. You could tell she was a first-timer by the way she practically haloed her daughter with every step, making sure she never touched the ground with anything but her precious little shoes. The little girl watched curiously as I fed Liam.

"How old is he?" the mom asked.

"8 Months," I replied.

"Wow! And he already eats solid food?" she questioned.

"Well....he is my 4th so we feed him whatever we are eating," I justified, not knowing why I should need to do so. I mean, he is 8 months and is quite capable of putting down a steak or hot dog if cut into small enough pieces....no teeth required! "How old is your daughter?" I asked.

"She just turned one, but she spits out anything we put in her mouth," the mother said. At that moment, Madeline chimed in:

"Wanna see our pet snail?" she asked excitedly, as always.

"A REAL snail?" the mother questioned me with what seemed like a combination of fear and disgust.

"Yes," I said plainly.

"Huh," she said as she swooped her little girl up in two arms and quickly went back to her seat across the room.

My friend and I had a hard time containing our laughter....IT'S A SNAIL! It's not like she had a rattlesnake in there (although I wouldn't put it past her).

But then, maybe now I am beginning to understand the reason for The Weather Channel's extreme weather warning that it may rain. It's code language for: THE SNAILS ARE COMING! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Unfortunately, by the time the sky started to fall, and we experienced the "Significant Weather Changing Storm" (that lasted all of 10 minutes, and included, get this, a rain shower!) Snaily Nail had already gone home to be with the good Lord....Apparently, the bucket lacked the moisture necessary to sustain snail life. But beware: The rollie pollies are still flourishing. 

News Flash

If you go to The Weather Channel and look at the info for Laguna Hills, CA, you will see a Severe Weather Alert flashing at you, all red and warning-like. Click on it and you will see this:

... SIGNIFICANT WEATHER CHANGE COMING TO SOUTHWEST CALIFORNIA BY THIS WEEKEND...ALL AREAS EXCEPT THE LOWER DESERTS HAVE A POSSIBILITY OF RAIN.

oooooooh....rain....I'm trembling, aren't you???? Better hole on up so we don't get, um, wet or something! (In case you are wondering, there are big warnings on the sides of showers in CA as well: BEWARE, WATER COMES OUT OF THIS DEVICE!)

Well, I'm off to round up the chicks before they find out what an umbrella is....I go with peace of mind that there is the possibility of Significant Change a comin'! 

Have a great weekend!

Stitch

Overheard the other day:

"Ok, let's play house. I'm the daddy," Aidan said.

"And I am the mommy," Madeline excitedly replied.

"Lily, you be the cat," Aidan finished. Hee hee. That's close but I think they'd be more accurate making her their adopted creature from outer space and calling her Stitch.

Chicken Food

The lesser prairie-chicken’s diet consists of insects, seeds, and leaves, catkins, and buds of forbs (broad-leaved plants) and cultivated crops. -Wildlife Habitat Council

In short, chickens eat bugs.

Since school started a few weeks ago for Aidan and Madeline, I have had a small but significant issue on my hands: an un-entertained Lily. Although it is nice having some time with just her and Liam, today I simply needed to get some stuff done. And when I soon realized leaving Lily to her own devices meant finding her snap-crackle-and-popping around in a huge pile of Rice Krispie Cereal, of which she had dumped HALF A BOX all over the kitchen floor, I quickly came up with a new tactic: I gave Lily a cup, sent her out back and told her to find some bugs. After a while she came back in unannounced and soon we went to pick up her sister from school.

Fast forward to dinner...

I was browsing the refrigerator, deciding what to fix for dinner when I noticed an empty tupperware container on the middle shelf. I pulled it out and much to my surprise I saw a big, black and well preserved beetle sitting in the corner of the container. Apparently, though some chickens eat bugs, others just save them for later. Good ol' Lily.

Nothing about chickens...

We have this gene in our family (both sides of the family) that seems to give people the grand delusion that they know everything, and then some. So, last year or so I found the perfect birthday card for one of our family members that went something like this: On the front there was an old man and an old lady. The old man was pointing to a piece of land jutting out into the water and saying, "You see that land there? That's called a stick-out." And on the inside it said something along the lines of "You are finally at the age where you can make up all the answers." (Or something like that.) I thought it was funny anyway....

I regret to inform you that the Lily of yester-week is no longer with us. I went to get Lily out of bed the other day and HOLY TORPEDO! There was a TWO YEAR OLD MONSTER in her bed...and it had eaten Lily! I don't know what happened to the sweet, calm (ha ha) child that was Lily but the NEW Lily is out of control crazy!

This week alone I have had to incorporate my knee into the morning routine of getting a pull-up on her, an elbow to get her buckled into her car seat and an arm's distance for carting her into the time-out bathroom while she flings every part of her strong little body in my (and every other) direction. For sure, this is all par for the course (assuming you are playing the back nine through Dante's Inferno), but compared to our sweet, tiny Liam (whose blood work confirmed he is in fact just a Hobbit....related by some rare mutation to Bilbo Baggins himself....), she has gone totally mad.

Today I have had to:

1. Drag her out from UNDER THE TRUCK where she was half asleep and still somehow arguing that it was there she wanted to take her nap. (What child wants to take a nap under a car?)

2. Teach her how to use a Magic Eraser (God's gift to motherhood!) to scrub purple crayon off tile floors, wooden cabinetry, and marble countertops (Where the heck was I? Apparently NOT standing right next to her like I had thought!)

3. Explain to her that the towel racks in the bathroom are NOT called "Monkey Bars" nor are they meant to be hung on (Now I know how we have lost two of four toilet paper racks....and she actually used the term Monkey Bars: "Mai Jane, see da Monkey bars?" Swing, swing...)

And it doesn't stop there. Today she has also:

1. Spit her vitamin out all over the couch and then proceeded to lick it all off again (eww).

2. Took the new pack of bologna out of the refrigerator, opened it and very carefully placed each piece end to end on the kitchen floor (so much for mopping yesterday).

3. (after being told to try to keep her new undies dry) went outside, turned on the faucet and sat down in the middle of the running water (so much for potty training).

4. Swung on the master bedroom door by holding the door knobs on either side (and now I see how one got pulled out of the hinges) and lastly,

5. Readily admitted to having drawn on the side of the house in pink and blue chalk (Me: "Who painted on the house with the chalk?" Lily: "That MEEEE!" If only it were always so easy.)

She keeps me on my toes...And apparently I am not as fast as I used to be!

But, with her older siblings, she still shows an extreme amount of grace. During quiet time today, Madeline and Lily went back to their room and immediately Madeline started screaming at Lily:

"NO! DON'T GO IN MY ROOM! YOU'LL MESS IT UP!" she yelled.

"Okay," Lily said calmly, reminiscent of her former self. "Do you want to go into my room, Mai Jane?" Lily asked

"Sure," Madeline said. It's funny because, well, they share a room.

What about Aidan you might ask? Well, later this afternoon, Aidan was looking for the Sharpie marker and asked Madeline where it was.

"What's a sharpie?" she asked.

"It's a big marker that is very sharp," Aidan answered.

The apples just keep falling right under the tree...."Hey look, a stick-out!"

Chase Rooster

Apparently, in the midst of the political "discussion" going on out there, some people have a little too much time on their hands. Here is a new site out: The Sarah Palin Name Generator-The idea is you plug in your name to see what she would have named you.

For the record, I do not advocate making fun of what people name their kids nor do I think the names Sarah Palin chose for hers are all that outrageous. True, some people name their kids absurd names, names that make you feel sorry for the kid come middle school; names that make you think there ought to be fines for such ridiculousness. But truly, baby naming is a personal issue and in all but the few irresponsible cases (like the parent who named their kid Abcdef) I believe it is important to go in with a loving and non-judgemental heart. But I, like George, was curious. So I stuck in my name and those of my kids and I was pleasantly surprised because I got me a chicken! Liam came up as Chase Rooster! Truly ironic...really. (And who has too much time on their hands?)

Speaking of Chase Rooster, recently he has had a serious of tests done to try to figure out why he isn't growing (he has gotten so far below the normal curve, we are wondering if he is possibly just an elf.) Today he had to have a sweat chloride test done to rule out Cystic Fibrosis. It is a bizarre test. First, they hooked these little electrode thingys (the medical term for sure) up to his arms to make them sweat. Then they taped on this other contraption to the sweat which contained tightly coiled ultra-tiny tubing (think angel hair pasta) and dye. Finally, I was given the instruction to get him hot and sweaty over the course of the next 45 minutes so they could collect a sweat sample.

Ok, so when was the last time you tried making an infant sweat? Seriously now....trying to obtain the proper stool sample a few days ago was one thing (at least that comes pretty naturally and there's a diaper to catch it!) but this? It's not like I can say, "Ok Chase Rooster, now make it count! Crawl 10 laps around this room and then give me 10 push-ups..." Well, I could say it, but he'd just give me his I-will-melt-your-heart-with-my- toothless-grin look and with a little luck, maybe flap his arms. So, out we went to sit in the hot car. That was super fun...especially when Liam started crying and I, sweat rolling down my face, was like, "Good job Liam! Make it count!" I imagine the little old lady in the car next to me was probably texting Child Services while adjusting her oxygen mask.

When we got back to the lab, the tech said, "Just so you know, we rarely get enough sweat from a baby for the test to be conclusive." (Gee, really?) "We have run about 40 of these tests in the year and a half I have worked here and none of them have been positive for CF." That was one of those moments like in a football game when the announcer says, "An interesting stat: this kicker hasn't missed a field goal attempt in the last 150 games." And then after the kick: "Oh wow! I can't believe it! He missed the game deciding kick! How about that?" Well duh, you just jinxed him two minutes ago. I hadn't felt the least bit worried until that moment.

But, we were lucky, our little champ gave them enough sweat (all of two tiny blue droplets carefully squeezed out of the tubing) to run the test. And we were blessed: the test came back negative.

And that folks, wraps up our grace filled day. Now it's time for me to take Tangle Jig back to her bed so that Luger Otter and I, Khaki Salmon, can retire for the night. :)